I'm having Compusa build be a custom PC, and this was the highest end video card they had. I'm pretty certain that it will work well for me from the reviews I have read, but as always I was wondering what the folks at the player's club had to say.

Looks good, what about more RAM? I believe some of the latest games, such as Battlefield 2, are actually recommending something like 1.2g RAM. Since you are setting up a nice computer, why don't you just get 2g RAM? (I'm great at spending other people's money!) You could switch one of the hard drives for more RAM?

I'm actually going to be increasing the RAM on my comp to over 1g. My computer has a 60g hard drive, and it is just barely over half full, with over 100 games on it now.

Originally posted by Tvov Looks good, what about more RAM? I believe some of the latest games, such as Battlefield 2, are actually recommending something like 1.2g RAM. Since you are setting up a nice computer, why don't you just get 2g RAM? (I'm great at spending other people's money!) You could switch one of the hard drives for more RAM?

I'm actually going to be increasing the RAM on my comp to over 1g. My computer has a 60g hard drive, and it is just barely over half full, with over 100 games on it now.

Kind of maxed out the C.C. with the setup, (included monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse and three games). But the first upgrade will be another gig of RAM and mabye a DVD-RW drive.

Also the twin hard drives is not for storage space, I don't need that much either, but with the raid setup, you get much faster streaming speeds to and from the HD, improving performance quite a bit, or so I've been lead to believe.

Hell of a video card. Depending on whose benchmarks you read, it's slightly faster than the 6800 Ultra in some apps and slightly slower in others. It IS the absolute fastest card you can buy for HL2 though and certainly won't be holding you back in any games for quite some time.

And regarding the RAID 0, it's not going to do much for your in game performance other than decrease loading time and possibly reduce some in game stuttering when it has to load parts from the HD. If you work with large image files or do any video editing, you'll like it too.

First off, that's the only non-nVIDIA card I'd own...and even then, just because of the power it packs. The Catalyst drivers still bite, and the fact remains that the nearly-equal GeForce 6800GT is about half the price with far better driver support all around.

I cringe to think of how muchCrapUSA is going to overcharge you on this build.

FYI, you simply do NOT need more than one gigabyte of RAM in your PC unless you plan to do a lot of video editing ect.

The addition of two more RAM sticks, or going from 2x512MB to 2x1024MB often causes substantial slowdowns in games.

The recommended amount of RAM in those games typically refers to the paging file, or Virtual Memory allotted. Less than that will cause stuttering or even crashes at times, but more physical memory, over 1GB, will not help that situation in most cases.

FYI, you simply do NOT need more than one gigabyte of RAM in your PC unless you plan to do a lot of video editing ect.

The addition of two more RAM sticks, or going from 2x512MB to 2x1024MB often causes substantial slowdowns in games.

The recommended amount of RAM in those games typically refers to the paging file, or Virtual Memory allotted. Less than that will cause stuttering or even crashes at times, but more physical memory, over 1GB, will not help that situation in most cases.

?? I've always heard RAM RAM RAM, when it comes to gaming. The more the better, never enough. I have 512 right now, and am going to get a 1g. I was thinking of leaving a 256 stick in, so I would have a total of 1.2+ RAM. Do you think this would work?

Actually, I just talked to a friend last night who is rather computer knowledgable. He explained (in simple enough terms) about ram, and getting matched ram chips. I have a bit of searching and price shopping to do.

Right. Most machines run fastest (with current applications) with four 256MB DIMMs or two 512s.

Two 1024MB sticks or four 512's usually make the machine run somewhat more slowly due to the extra CPU cycles that are needed to maintain communication to the extra banks and the RAM real estate they contain.

I have built several high-end gaming rigs where the client demanded, against my advice, to install two or three GB of DDR.

And, without exception, those machines ran slower than mine did.

As I have said, the only rigs that need more than 1024MB of RAM right now are those that will do mostly video editing/encoding duties.

They will have reviews for just about everything you can dream of stuffing in your comp.

I agree with the ram issue. More than 1gig is overkill and can cause you problems. Just make sure you get quality ram over quanitity.

I also second the AMD option. Currently, AMD is killing Intel for gaming. And the old wive's tale of AMD running hotter than Intel is just marketing bunk. AMD publishes numbers run to the extreme where Intel publishes mid-range numbers.

I know just enough about computers to ruin a build, so I went with a Falcon Northwest Talon rig about 2mos ago. I spent about $2200 and could have built it for around $1900 for an exact parts match. My benchmarks are high enough on everything that I can brag to the uber-geeks and my framerates on BF2 are even in the lower 60's during a 32 vs 32 match on the larger maps.

Btw, the money I saved on not putting 2gig of ram into the box and going with the BFG 6600GT OC GPU PCI-E I put right back into it and got a Saitek gamers keyboard (pretty lights...) and the new Logitec MX-518 mouse (which is about the only thing I'll tell someone they'd better buy if they love gaming and take it seriously). I love my current rig.